


Sailing Into a Keen City

by dashakay



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows this conversation needs to happen but she doesn’t want to have it, not right now. All she wants is to bury herself in details about lights in the sky or mysterious deaths in a tiny mountain town, to lose herself in the minutiae of the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sailing Into a Keen City

**Author's Note:**

> This for lovely mulderswaterbed, to hopefully make her smile.

It’s past noon by the time Scully makes it down to the basement, after a morning of filling out endless forms in triplicate at HR, and having a truly horrifying picture of herself taken for her new ID. 

She walks down the basement corridor, still impressively dingy, complete with flickering fluorescent lights straight out of a David Lynch film. Her heart beats faster with each step closer. She’s experiencing full-blown déjà vu. Or maybe it’s PTSD. Take your pick, she thinks, pausing to tuck the ring on its chain into her blouse. She was so young that day in 1992, just a rookie. She’s had no way of knowing how her life was going to transform by stepping into Mulder’s office. 

There it is, the door. The name plaque reads FOX MULDER. Still no sign of Dana Scully, of course. She shrugs and knocks on the door for old times’ sake. 

“Come in,” she hears him say. 

She steps into the office for the first time in almost fourteen years. It’s much emptier than back in the day but it still smells the same, like dust and old books and bad coffee. 

“You said it wrong,” she says to his back. 

The chair slowly rotates to face her. “Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted,” he drawls. He looks good with a haircut and a fresh shave, dressed in a brand new blue suit with a red tie. She hasn’t seen him in a suit for a long time. Their wedding may have been the last time. 

“That’s better,” she says. She feels herself smiling, despite herself. She notices the I WANT TO BELIEVE poster tacked on the wall behind his desk. It’s a new one, slightly different from the one she remembers.  She wonders what happened to the old one. 

Mulder stands. “Check it out,” he says. “Your desk. A victory for feminism.” 

The desk is just a standard-issue government desk, nothing to write home about, but it’s all hers. Ugly as it is, she’s never loved a desk more. She takes off her suit jacket and lays it on the back of the chair. A thick casefile is sitting on the desk. Scully sits down and picks it up. It’s heavy in her hands. 

“You want to give me a rundown on the case, Mulder?” 

He scoots his chair closer to hers. “I think we should talk first.” 

She knows this conversation needs to happen but she doesn’t want to have it, not right now. All she wants is to bury herself in details about lights in the sky or mysterious deaths in a tiny mountain town, to lose herself in the minutiae of the case. 

“Mulder,” she says, feeling her forehead wrinkle. “Maybe it’s best if we stick to the work. At least at first…” 

Talking didn’t work when they separated three years ago. Eventually they ran out of words. 

He nods. “I just want to make sure you’re all right with this. Not many people would agree to partner with their ex-husband.” 

“You’re  _not_  my ex-husband,” Scully says. “At least, not on paper.” Her right hand wants to reflexively touch the ring nestled in her blouse. 

“You know what I mean.” 

Almost everyone in her life think she’s nuts to work with Mulder again. Her mother, Monica, her other friends, her brothers. The only person who thinks it might not be a terrible idea is Elizabeth, her therapist, who said the experience could be cathartic. 

“I don’t know how I feel right now,” she says and it’s the truth. She’s excited, she’s wary, she’s nostalgic, she’s weirdly hopeful, she’s worried, all at once. 

“Why did you decide to do it?” Mulder asks, leaning forward in his chair. 

She lifts her chin. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because, after all these years, I want to know the truth. Isn’t that what  _you_  want?” 

Mulder nods. 

Scully touches his arm and feels him flinch, ever so slightly. “I’ve been trying to think about this and, in the end, I don’t think getting out of the car was good for us.” 

“I don’t know,” he says, sighing. “We had some good years.” 

She thinks of their funny little house in the Virginia countryside, the warmth of fires in the hearth in winter and the smell of newly mown grass in summer. She remembers the creaking of their bed when they made love and Sunday mornings with pancakes and coffee. But she can’t forget the silence that insidiously crept through that house, how during the last year Mulder seemed further away with each passing day. She recalls every single argument she had with him, begging him to get help, to do something, _anything_  to stem the tide of the depression that had turned him into a shell of the man she love. And she’ll never forget how he insisted that nothing was wrong, that he was just fine, that he didn’t need help.

She remembers the day she left, a beautiful spring day when the trees and flowers were blooming and the birds had the nerve to sing. 

“We did,” she says. “I’ll never forget them, Mulder.” She blinks away tears. This office is no place for tears. She needs to be strong for the work. 

“I miss you,” he says, his voice barely audible. 

Scully nods. “You have me now.” 

“It’s not the same.” His lower lip sticks out, just a little, that pouty expression she always found so irresistible. 

“I know. It’ll never be the same.” She taps the casefile on her desk. “But we’re back in the car. We’re going to travel miles and miles again. Maybe, if we cover enough miles…”

Mulder exhales sharply. “Then we’d better get moving on this case.” 

He picks up a small remote. “I’ve prepared a PowerPoint with just the highlights.” 

“Mulder,” she scolds. “You’re doing it wrong.” 

For just a second she’s twenty-eight years old again, pink-cheeked and wearing an ugly suit she bought on clearance at Marshall’s. Mulder is wearing glasses and he’s young and unblemished and much too handsome for the likes of her. He turns on a slide projector and says in an excited voice, “Oregon female, age twenty-one, no explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing.” 

“What?” Mulder says, back in present time. 

“Where’s the slide projector?” 

“Gone the way of the dinosaur, Scully. I asked Tech Services for one earlier this week and they had the nerve to laugh in my face.” 

She shakes her head. “This is wrong. So wrong. PowerPoint has no place in this office.” 

“You’re a dinosaur yourself,” he says. 

She stands up and grabs her jacket. “Be right back,” she says. 

“Where are you going?” 

“I’m going to find a slide projector. I can’t believe there isn’t at least one in this old warhorse of a building.” She starts for the door, her heels clicking on the linoleum. 

Her hand is on the doorknob when she hears his voice. “Scully?” he calls out. 

She turns around. “Yeah, Mulder?” 

“It’s good to be back.” 

Scully nods. “It is,” she says and walks out into the dim hallway, ready to find a slide projector, maybe even ready to get back in the car.


End file.
